Hi Peter,
It’s Anna, you taught me to drive about 3/4 years ago now 🙂
I wanted to say hi, and see how you were doing. My hot-mail account has been redundant for a while now, and I lost your mobile number in various phone changes, and while I remember this account is my University email and I’ll lose it when I finish Uni in a couple of months.
I just wanted to let you know how brilliant your lessons were. All my family and friends think I’m a fantastic driver – my friends parents likehow I drive- I’ve even been asked to take their younger kids somewherebecause they like how safe I am.
But that’s not why I’m emailing – just before Christmas I was in a car crash on the A34 Dual Carriage way, heading out of Newbury to go home (wemoved to Scotland last year). Half hour into an 8 hour trip we were in near stationary traffic, my Dad (with his parents) were in the car infront of me, and I noticed he had pulled over, almost totally off the left laneonto the verge. I had my music on, and as I looked up to notice my Dad hadmoved, I heard someone’s tired scream as they locked and were trying to doan emergency stop.
My first thought at this point wasn’t “what on earth is that”, but of thenight you took me and your other students to the Fire-brigade evening in Newbury, where they talked about crashes, gave a demonstration of cutting someone out a crashed car and such. (How fast the mind works) I instantly knew I was going to get hit, because of what I had been taught that night, and moved my car to the left after my Dad. It wasn’t enough however, and while moving I looked over my right shoulder just in time to see the car come piling into me.
Luckily I had moved enough for the hit to be taken onto my entire right hand-side, instead of straight into the back of me. The car bounced off, missed my Dad and hit the car infront of him. The car stopped, and the poor girl was in shock, it was clearly an accident. Gladly no-one was hurt seriously, and my car was able to still drive to Scotland that day.
I wanted to let you know how brilliant your lesson were, not just for my practical everyday driving, but for the serious stuff too. I’m convinced that evening you insist your students go to was the reasons my brain knew what was going to happen, and why I reacted the way I did. If I hadn’t the full force of the crash would have been on the back of my car, and there’s no doubt I would have gone to hospital and my car would have been a write-off. So this is a HUGE thank you for all you taught me, you are a fantastic instructor, and to let you know I still recommend to you absolutely everyone!
Thank you very much 🙂 Hope you are well,
Anna Noddle.